Friday, July 23, 2010

The Slow Fade

It’s been a bit of a strange week, what with the Tuesday-off interruption. That deviation from routine would have been something in and of itself, even if it had been for some prosaic reason like needing to stay at home for an appliance delivery or something like that. I like a three-day weekend as much as the next working stiff, but somehow a midweek day off seems even more monumental (possibly because, as opposed to a Friday on leave, a Tuesday away from the office significantly reduces the number of days I have to dress up and wear a tie) and creates all kinds of cognitive dissonance: Monday feels like Friday and Wednesday feels like Monday and so on. So add to that the fact that my Tuesday-off came on the heels of a Monday wherein I was feeling most peculiar indeed thanks to the drug stimulation, and was followed by a brief but non-trivial recovery, and furthermore consider that the entire Donation Day scenario had been looming on the horizon for a couple of months which leads to an inevitable feeling of “huh, now what?” once it’s passed by … I find myself oddly rudderless as the workweek, such as it is this go-around, draws to a close.

Next week is going to be yet another short week, but of the more traditional configuration, as I take Friday off and my nuclear family roadtrips up north for an extended family occasion, my Little Bro’s wedding. I’ll try to get that week’s blogging off to a strong start since it will inevitably be interrupted by the festivities.

Right now, though, I’m about all out of gas, so I will close with a random anecdotal thought (which would normally be saved for a Saturday Grab Bag, except this week I haven’t had the presence of mind to prepare one): if you are walking down the sidewalk talking on your cell phone, even if you raise your voice to be heard over the ambient city noises of idling bus engines and rattling construction equipment and whatnot, people will totally ignore you, for the most part. But if you modulate your tone ever so slightly into the register reserved for talking to a toddler, because your wife handed the phone to the little guy so he could say “hi”, all of a sudden people whip their heads around and lock onto the source of your kidspeak-voice. I guess maybe they are looking for the actual two-year-old, wondering who would have one close at hand in a commuter area during rush hour? Whatever the underlying cause, it really is a remarkable phenomenon.